Monday, 8 July 2013

This will probably be a fairly short post as, unlike most entries, I don't really have a specific point to make. The title is me musing on the polemic that surrounds climate engineering, and the fact that it is amplifying all the time. The headline is, of course, a note to Michael Mann's book, titled 'The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars: Dispatches from the Front Line'. I can honestly say I am not surprised by the lengths some will go to to discredit scientists, the following being one of a number of extreme examples from a distant scientific field.

Without trying to belittle those who have been on a real front line (OK, I admit the choice of analogy does make me squirm a bit Prof. Mann), I suspect this is how it feels to be vilified by one end of the spectrum in the AGW 'debate'. That got me thinking about climate engineering and those who research it. The point about the 'trenches' argument is that it is conventional, two adversarial groups squaring off (maybe the house of commons is a better analogy). Michael Mann no doubt has his compadres and must (I hope) take solace in their support. Climate engineering researchers however, you could argue, have it even worse. We are stuck, screaming, in no-mans-land (to push the analogy to breaking point) and taking fire from both sides. In fact, those with whom we typically identify are often more hostile that those with whom we normally vehemently disagree.

So, what now? Crawl back to the trenches and hope never to visit no-mans-land again, or stay there and face the flak.